The State of Bank of Hyderabad (SBH) and State Bank of India (SBI) are now preparing to go in for a large ATM expansion in Telangana.

Almost 600 new ATMs will start in the next few months in the state. Instead of hiring security guards, all ATMs will be under e-surveillance.

"We have got the permission to establish 450 new ATMs in the state. We have already undertaken a survey to fix the location of these ATMs," S Rangachari, assistant general manager of SBH said.

"The locations where a minimum of 150 transactions are guaranteed will be preferred", he added.

"The ATMs will not be controlled by a security guard, instead they will be monitored by e-surveillance. All the transactions will be monitored by the agency from a central server. Each ATM will be set up at a cost of nearly Rs 3 lakh and equipped to do transactions on chip-based cards", he added.

Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has directed all banks to switch to this method to avoid cloning of cards in ATMs before next year.

Most ATMs will be in set up in 10X10 area in order to accommodate the second machine in future.

Sources in the banking sector said that "SBI also got the permission for expansion of ATMs. Nearly 150 ATMs will be set up. Earlier, the RBI used to give permissions for the banks for ATM expansion, now the managements take a call on the issue. After demonetisation, the ATMs have become more important as each cheque transaction worth Rs 5,000 will cost about Rs 75 for the bank, whereas it costs only Rs 40 in the case of ATMs."

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BY M. DIVYA SRI